


tableau vivant

by ndnickerson



Category: Nancy Drew (TV 2019)
Genre: Depression, F/M, Fade to Black, First Meetings, First Time, Fourth of July, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Lust at First Sight, Pre-Canon, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22328437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: She was in pain, and his was the most convenient knife.Nancy and Nick's first meeting; spoils through 1x03.
Relationships: Nancy Drew/Ned Nickerson
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	tableau vivant

Families had gathered on the main Horseshoe Bay beach, clustered on blankets and beach towels, most of them decorated in some combination of stars and stripes. The smell of charred meat and salt tang carried on the breeze, and more than a few couples and families had brought buckets of ice and coolers full of sweating beers and malt liquor.

Nancy snagged a beer from an unattended bucket, her gaze pointed straight ahead as she made a beeline to the rocks, away from the din of laughter and shouts and music. Most people didn't brave this part of the beach. The last glimmers of sunlight caught on the tears tracked down her face, and she had long since stopped bothering to wipe them away.

_She should be here._

Nancy thought it, _felt_ it with such vehemence that she trembled slightly. Fireworks had always been her mother's favorite, and though Nancy didn't want to, though some superstitious part of her warned she shouldn't be here, she found the place they had always come to watch the show, the three of them.

Now, her father was on a business trip, or at least that was his excuse, and Nancy was alone.

Her friends, or at least the people she had mistakenly called her friends for a while, were deep in their plans for college, living it up during these last weeks of freedom, hitting department stores for dorm-bed linens and plastic milk crates, area rugs and shower caddies.

The version of her who would have been right there with them had died with her mother.

Nancy twisted the cap off and took a long, desperate swig of the beer, stumbling to a sitting position.

She was empty, so fucking empty and so, so fucking numb.

She was gone. Her mother was gone. Forever. The person who had been the center of her world for so long...

Nancy unsuccessfully choked back a sob, taking another swig of the beer. It tasted disgusting, but she didn't care. All the money her father had willingly, gladly, spent on treatments to give her mother any peace after the diagnosis had turned into the reason he was gone all the time, trying to find money to claw their way out from under the mountain of debt that hadn't magically vanished when Kate Drew took her last breath. And even if her father had been around, what the fuck would she say to him? What the fuck _could_ she say to him?

She was just so hurt and so, so lost.

But at least she wasn't drinking alone, not _alone_ -alone. Not tonight.

And as shitty as it was... she had been drowning in her grief for so long, and had been happy to do it. It was the least she could do, to honor her mother. Even as everyone around her lost patience when she just couldn't seem to get over it or past it.

As though a week would somehow be long enough. As though the rest of her life would somehow be long enough to heal the gaping wound inside her.

Because nothing mattered. Not now. Not ever again.

She glanced at the edge of the rock, where the stone kissed the horizon, and thought of it idly, that singsong childish rhyme about Lucy Sable. For the first time in her life, she understood what could make someone stand on the precipice, look over, and decide that whatever waited below, it was better than _this_.

All she felt was pain. Bottomless, fathomless pain, and rage. Her mother hadn't been a saint, but she had been incredible. And now she was gone. Everything she had ever planned to share with her, the milestones in her life her mother would never see...

Nancy took another swig of the beer, her other hand splayed against the stone.

At least her mother wasn't suffering anymore.

But _fuck,_ fuck it _all_ , that just wasn't enough. It was a pitifully, painfully low bar to set, and Nancy had prayed, wished, _willed_ so hard to just give her mother a few more months, a few more days. A handful of hours without suffering.

Nothing fucking mattered now. Not anymore.

She took another swig of beer as the first spark rose to drift, suspended, in the sky, in that hushed anticipation before the first explosion.

\--

Nick climbed out of the work truck and paused, glancing up at the first explosion as it lit up the sky in a fountain of gold glitter, searing against the dark.

Horseshoe Bay. He snorted. Horseshoes were supposed to be lucky. If anything, he was due for a little good luck.

His friends, even some of the people who had been at the party that fucking awful night, were avoiding him like his prison sentence was a contagion that would taint them, too.

_Ex-con._

He'd had a _hell_ of a long time to think about it, to really nail down every detail from that awful party, and he'd figured out he wouldn't do anything differently. Oh, of course if he could have somehow prevented Austin's fall, he would have. Yeah, Nick had wanted him dead, but that hadn't meant he'd _done_ it. Not really.

In the end, it didn't matter. Nothing did. Kate, who had been such an incredible help to him, was gone now. His old life, all he had imagined it could be, had been buried with Austin, buried every single fucking day he woke up in that cinder-block cell. Especially once Tiffany had given him that book of Poe stories. He'd thought of it over and over, the fetters, the hysterical screams, the slow entombing.

He was free, but in a way he never would be. Maybe his records were sealed, but everyone knew who he was and what he had done.

But not here. Not in Horseshoe Bay, where he supposed he had been lucky enough to find a job and a place to stay all in one. Here, he only had to deal with the usual microaggressions, not the sharp, acrid taste in his mouth when he saw an expression twist in distaste, pity, and fear.

_He got angry and killed once. It could happen again._

It never would. If he had ever been that guy, he wasn't now.

And yet.

Nick shoved his hands in his pockets and, gazing up at the sky, made his way around the outskirts of the party on the beach. Faces were tipped up in silent wonder, the bright flecks of color reflected in their gleaming eyes.

He probably should just have stayed back in the shop. He was working on a tricky reassembly, anyway.

But he kept sidling past the staked-out territory, blankets marking out space for friends, family, couples. People who weren't alone. And even here, at this impersonal event, this communal experience, Nick felt a pang.

He'd been popular once, back home. He'd had the rest of his life spread out before him. Now... now, he was here.

For nothing. For absolutely fucking nothing. For no reason other than while he was in prison, home as he knew it had vanished. His body, his sense of self—that had been battered, too.

Sometimes rage could be purifying, but he could still feel the last dregs of it sloshing around inside him, waiting for a spark, a match, _something_. He felt tense, edgy. Angry at the unfairness of it all, and angry that he was stuck _here._

One other person had found the rocks before him, and he nearly turned back, but a shower of blue brilliance illuminated her and he stopped. She was facing away from him, and had long reddish-blonde hair falling in waves.

It made him think of Kate.

It made him think of just one more good thing in his life that had vanished when he needed it most.

She looked like she was Nick's age, but she had an empty beer bottle beside her, and—

And she glanced up at him, lazily, but he still saw it. Her cheeks shining with tears, her eyes puffy from it. A tension in her jaw, a faint tremor in her lower lip.

And Kate. Kate's eyes, and the shape of Kate's face.

_Nancy_. Her name came to him immediately. Kate had mentioned her in passing a few times, and Nick had filed it away obsessively, because any new information was something to help distract him while he was serving his time.

She blinked, but kept gazing up at him, no hint of recognition or of fear on her face.

If he told her that he'd known her mother, oh, he'd see fear there. Of that, he had no doubt. She didn't know him, and it was best that he just kept it that way.

But he took a step closer. "This seat taken?"

She shrugged and gestured beside her. "Feel free."

He matched his posture to hers, propping himself up to gaze into the sky while the fireworks popped and whistled, soaring, drifting, then plummeting, blinking out before reaching the earth.

She sniffled.

And that same instinct that had had him standing up to Austin, taking him on to save someone else, that same damn protectiveness rose up and he touched her hand. He didn't say anything; there was nothing _to_ say. Her mother had been an incredible woman, and even for Nick, who had known her so brief a time, the loss had been devastating. How much more so for her treasured only daughter?

Nancy sniffled again. "Look," she muttered, her voice rough, hoarse from the rasp of her tears, and he glanced over at her, his heart kicking hard in his chest when their gazes locked.

She was gorgeous. Despite her pain, maybe even through it, she was beautiful.

"Want to get out of here?" She glanced away for a second, then back at him. Nervous, but not because she was picturing him in an orange jumpsuit. Nervous because she looked like the kind of girl who always colored in the lines, who didn't ask what he was almost positive she was asking five minutes after barely meeting a stranger.

"Yeah," he admitted, on an exhale. He nodded, holding her gaze again.

"You have a place?"

He nodded again.

"Then let's go there."

Red hair. _Lily_ , he thought, as he pushed himself up, offering Nancy a hand. But the woman who took his hand would never be so desperate, so weak, as Lily. Lily would have stayed to watch the fireworks, that pitiable woman in the Wharton book Tiffany had given him.

But Nancy took his hand in a firm grip, not once looking back as she strode confidently with him to the beat-up truck he'd driven here, and he had to admit he was more than a little turned on by it. _A little of that patented Nickerson charm,_ he remembered his grandma saying once, that charm he'd thought he'd lost somewhere between those cinderblock walls.

She was in pain, and his was the most convenient knife.

But after he wordlessly escorted her through the chaotic mess of the shop and to his claustrophobic bunk, expecting the whole time for her to make some excuse and leave, she bit her lip and stripped her panties off from beneath her skirt, and she gasped once before they crashed together, scrabbling, desperate, while the fireworks sparked brilliance against the velvet black.

Maybe his luck really was turning around.


End file.
